This substantial book
(496 pages including notes, bibliography
and index) is one of the excellent Cambridge
‘Companions to Music’ series. Books
in the series tend to fall into one
of three categories, books dedicated
to a particular instrument, to a particular
composer or to a more general category.
This book is in the latter section and
so in addition to books on Blues and
Gospel Music, Jazz, The Musical, the
Orchestra and Pop and Rock we have a
book dedicated to Grand Opera. Not opera
mind - that would probably be too expansive
a sweep, but a rather more tricky area
grand opera or more particularly grand
opéra. For this is a book
about the style of opera which developed
at the Paris Opéra in the 1830s;
a style which is relatively under-performed
at the moment but which was hugely influential
in its day.

If you search for available
recordings of the operas by Meyerbeer
you will find a number of his early
Italian operas, courtesy of Opera Rara
who specialise in early 19th
century Italian opera, but precious
few recordings from his French period.
His finest work is probably Les Huguenots
but the 1990 recording with a Francophone
cast is no longer available and the
only real alternative is the one starring
Joan Sutherland.

This scarcity is surprising
given the popularity and ubiquity of
Meyerbeer’s French operas in the 19th
and early 20th century. But
though the operas of Meyerbeer, Halévy
and Auber have dropped out of the repertoire
their influence is traceable into the
operas of Verdi (Les Vêpres
Sicilienne, Don Carlos), Berlioz
and Wagner. This book, edited by David
Charlton, goes some way towards explaining
the genre and looking at its influence.

Grand opéra
was a bourgeois phenomenon; it arose
because in the 1820s and 1830s the Paris
Opéra needed to attract back
an audience which had been seduced away
by the smaller, more exciting theatres.
Thanks to the political changes in France
since the 1790s this audience was mainly
middle class. So operas changed, out
went the mythical heroes and noble sentiments
of tragédie lyrique instead
opera incorporated grand historical
themes, conflicts between personal interest
and public duty, elaborate staging incorporating
the latest stage-craft, brilliant sets
and much dancing. The results were intended
to be gesamtkunstwerk before
even Wagner had thought of it; but this
was gesamtkunstwerk where the
composer was just one of many rather
than the presiding genius. And that
is the problem with the genre today:
the most popular examples were written
by composers such as Meyerbeer who were
technically adept but lacked true genius.
In his illuminating chapter about staging
grand opéra today, David
Pountney rightly says that only two
musical masterpieces of the genre are
Verdi’s Don Carlos and Rossini’s
Guillaume Tell.

The book has much ground
to cover. The first section deals with
the mechanics of grand opéra
itself. Hervé Lacombe’s informative
chapter on the Paris Opéra is
marred by its flowery, diffuse language
and Nicholas White’s chapter on librettos
and librettists barely avoids being
an indigestible list. But Simon Williams
provides excellent background to the
use of historical detail in the operas.
There are also chapters on the chorus,
the dance and the opera singers. All
include fascinating information, neither
James Parakilas (the chorus), nor Marian
Smith (dancers) nor Mary Ann Smart (the
soloists) manages to completely expunge
the suspicion that they were working
with a list of points that just had
to be covered.

The second part of
the book details with the operas themselves.
Here the writers have their work cut
out as much of this repertoire has dropped
completely out of sight. So Sarah Hibberd
has to fill in much that the early audiences
of Auber’s La Muette de Portici
would have taken for granted. Matthias
Brzoska and John H. Roberts describe
Meyerbeer’s four mature French operas
in detail. Both are candid about the
composer’s limitations, but nonetheless
they manage to convey something of their
enthusiasm; their articles made me curious
to see the operas for myself. Diana
R Hallman has the rather unenviable
task of working her way through Halévy’s
operas in order to provide a good background
to La Juive.

All these chapters
and the one describing the work of Rossini
and Verdi, and that charting the later
course of the opera, are well crafted
and informative, if a little heavy going.
What I did rather miss was something
of that breathless enthusiasm which
might have carried me away and convinced
me that someone loved these pieces rather
than that they simply felt them to be
interesting or important. That’s not
to say that the writers do not love
these operas, just that their articles
do not really convey it. There is a
little too much of the academic journal
about these pieces (complete with self
referential notes) and I understood
that this Cambridge Companions series
was aimed at the more general reader.

The book concludes
with a clutch of chapters which trace
the influence of grand opéra
across the globe. Wagner’s debt to the
genre is well known, but Thomas Grey
manages to illuminate various corners
of the repertoire, including the debt
owed by Götterdämmerung.
That Glinka was a contemporary of Meyerbeer’s
rather than a disciple goes some way
to explaining the relationship of Glinka’s
two operas to Western operatic styles
and Marina Frolova-Walker points up
the significance of grand opéra
in Russia. Even less obvious is the
influence
the genre had in Czech opera, though
Jan Smazcny’s article is perhaps hampered
by the fact that some of the operas
he talks about (e.g. Dvořák’s Dmitrij)
are not as well known in Western Europe
as they should be.

This is a comprehensive
and extensive book. Anyone needing to
study grand opéra should
ensure that they have it to hand. It
also provides superb background reading
if you want to explore the operas of
Meyerbeer et al. But it does
not make easy reading and I must admit
that there were times when only my duty
as a reviewer kept me going.

Robert Hugill

A comprehensive and extensive book.
Anyone needing to study grand opéra
should have it to hand. It provides
superb background but there were times
when only my duty as a reviewer kept
me going. ... see Full Review

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